Quaker Pagan Reflections

We have a guest post running today, over at Sermons from the Mound , part of the ongoing March series on the future of Paganism.  If you'd like to read Sacred Fire , head on over and take a look.

Meeting for worship was quite an experience for me today. Of course, Judy Harrow 's death was on my mind. I felt a poignancy to giving two Quaker elders their ride to meeting today--I was so conscious that what I cannot do for one elder, I am comforted to be able to do for another, so that even carpooling felt like an act of remembrance. Then, as I sat down, and just as I felt myself give way to sadness, one friend left her usual place and walked across the room to sit beside me, took my hand, and gave me a hug. I was reminded that I was not alone in my sadness, but with yet another of my spiritual tribes. It felt as though my grief brought Judy into the room with me, that it made a link, not a division in my worlds. And John and Mary Ellen were there. I had hoped they would be. John and Mary Ellen were caretakers at Woolman Hill back in the days when NELCOG used to meet there, and the fond memories go both ways; they remember their Pagans with love, just as th...

I want to write about Judy, but it's too hard. It's like I'm standing too close to something, trying to take a picture. Nothing comes into focus. It's all too big to fit into the frame. She was family. I guess that's what it comes down to. She could be maddening; she could be irascible. She sang off key; she made mistakes. She had the most astonishing students you could imagine; she was smart and disciplined and passionate, and she adored reaching out to people she imagined might be more those things than she was. She was righteous to a fault, absolutely dedicated to Pagan movement and the Craft, and probably constitutionally incapable of compromising her ethics. She loved scholarship and scholars, she loved innovation and music... and she loved her community. Photo used by permission: Chuck Furnace 2014 She was the first person to call me a "Pagan elder," and her saying it was part of what made it true, what made me t...

I wonder, sometimes, how much of my spiritual life is owing to the physical arrangement of books in the Wilbraham Public Library when I was small. I learned to read early; I can't remember a time when I didn't know how to read.  And in the beginning, I'm sure read what every young child reads: picture books picked out by my parents. The Wilbraham Free Library But my memories of books begin in the Wilbraham Public Library--not the spacious brick and glass building they have now, but the late Victorian building that was torn down before I started school.  Built in 1875, it looked like a castle to my childhood eyes... which is almost all I remember about it, except for a glass display case for a teddy bears' dollhouse, and the fact that there was one particular little nook in the children's room that was just the right size and shape for my small body to feel cozy and enfolded. And that small nook was where the fairy tale books lived. It's only now, as ...

I love where I live;  since moving to our new home four years ago, I've been able to build a relationship with a piece of land for the first time since I was a child.  It's everything a dirt-worshipping Pagan could ask for.  I have a garden, and I grow much of my own food, and that is as much a spiritual delight as a taste treat.  And I have woods again as neighbors: glacial boulders, white pines and black birches, owls and white-tailed deer. And bears. And the bears eat my lettuce. This picture has been Photoshopped. This is not real! I'm not kidding about that.  Oh, it's winter now, and the bears are huddled up in their dens.  But this past spring, I grew lettuce.  Award winning, gorgeous lettuce: three different kinds!  They were nourished to extraordinary size and succulence by the cool, wet weather we had, and each night, I would gather just a few outer leaves, knowing that careful tending would mean tasty salads for months. ...

 The other day, a Christian friend posted a link to two articles on the phenomenon of celebrity pastors, " The Evangelical Industrial Complex ."  And it got me thinking about the similarities and differences that exist, between the evangelical community and within my Pagan community. The issues in the Pagan community are different... but related, I think.  "The market"--whether we're talking about publishing or speakers at large gatherings--is really the only Commons we have for our community; because we have always been cash poor, we have very few non-profit institutions that can promote leadership and share ideas on anything but a market-values basis.  Until very recently, everything we have built had to pay for itself through market share in order to support itself at all.  And while projects like the fund drives for Cherry Hill Seminary   and The Wild Hunt are beginning to help with that, it's still largely true: what has a potential to bring in cash...

The Spiritual Journey so far: Prologue I: Peter In Kenya Prologue II: A Liberal Christian With Balls Part I: A Refugee Looks Back Part II: Leaving Home Part III: Who Am I? Part IV: Learning About Race and Gender Part V: Watching My Students Drown Part VI: Animal Bones  Sometimes there is a weird overlap between being a science teacher and a Pagan. Walking with my Environmental Science class one day to a graveyard to examine the weathering on different kinds of stones, a former student pulled up next to us in his pickup truck, leaned his head out the window and called out, “Hey Mr. Bishop, you want a bear head?” I said, “Sure!”  I mean, how many times do you get an offer like that? Actually, it turns out, more often than you would have thought.  Many of my students hunt, and the display case in my classroom now holds a nice little collection, with the bear and two deer—a buck and a doe—displayed alongside a human skull in fairly lifelike plastic. ...